4 Comments

Matt Levonian
16 novembre 2013

I bought Inner Mounting Flame and then Birds of Fire (which had just been released) at the same time on the strength of a review (of I.M.F.) in a 1972 issue of Guitar Player magazine. I was disappointed…I just couldn’t hear it. I knew something great was going on, but it was just beyond my grasp.

Then about half a year later, I saw the Love/Devotion tour with Santana in Santa Monica, CA. When John walked out (carrying the Double Rainbow), I was changed somehow. Being a guitar player, the instrument itself blew me out. Seeing and hearing what he did with it…to describe how it affected me is impossible. I felt like I’d been in the presence of something beyond this dimension. It changed my life and altered how I thought as a musician (and was directly responsible for my becoming a guitar maker as well).

Going home that night, I listened to B.O.F. and went « Ahhh, THAT’s what this is about! » To this day it amazes me how transformational it was, like gaining some kind of knowledge in a strange, gestalt way. I saw the Orchestra a few months later (last tour) and hearing B.O.F. live was even more powerful that the previous concert.

I saw the 2nd to last concert the original MO did together in Avery Fisher Hall NYC. I still remember John would not start playing until the audience became quiet, very quiet- or perhaps he was finding his place. B Cobham hit the gong…and again…and ‘it’ began. I had been a fan of Inner Mounting and BOF, so I knew the music, but honestly, when the ‘waves’ began…unreal.
During intermission I walked around the venue in a fog, and, no, hallucinagens were NOT involved lol.
The music, interplay, dynamics, depth of theme, overlay, entwining of solos, aggression-reflection, balance and edge… were/are beyond description, and I was VERY into fusion.
John- you are truly an ‘open channel’ and your music is transcendental.
Thank you.

My introduction to John’s recordings … never did I then or since have I been so absorbed by a recording and at the same time be disappointed by an album’s length …. Something magical was going on during the recording of Birds Of Fire because to this day when ever I play it I am transported to a place not here on Earth.

I remember sitting in the listening booth at Phillips Records here in Wellington NZ as a quality tester of LPs as they were coming off the presses one night in 1973. We were checking a new LP called Birds Of Fire by an orchestra with an exotic and unlikely name. I still remember how that first listen blew me away. I smuggled the first pressing back to our flat and we sat around stunned!
Thanks so much for opening the doors of perception, all those years ago,John!